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Following is a transcript of remarks by the Secretary for Education, Mr Eddie Ng, at a media session after attending the Education Panel meeting of the Legislative Council today (July 10):
Reporter: You said in the past that student enrollment figures were down, yet I know that there are more kids in the Year of the Dragon. How do you reconcile those two figures?
Secretary for Education: Two particular points to respond. The first one is that we believe we need to master the population data more intensively, more closely and more regularly in order to have a better picture of the fluctuation in population. That's the first thing. Second, yes, it's the Year of the Dragon. According to the Chinese culture, there will be more kids coming up. At the same time, there will be kids and babies coming in and out of Hong Kong as well. So what we are trying to do now is look closer at the data. We would be able to better position the number of schools, the number of classes, in order to make sure there will be sufficient provision. The only thing that we will have a little bit of challenge is the distribution by location. That is something that we need to be careful with. And also we would like to take a more mid and longer term view instead of a short term view. Maybe one or two years' of drop does not mean that we need to close any school. We might want to make it more flexible so that professional teachers and so on would not be worrying too much about their jobs. They would be able to focus on meaningful work and value-added work.
(Please also refer to the Chinese portion of the transcript.)
Ends/Tuesday, July 10, 2012
Issued at HKT 15:54
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